Solar panels bring a whole new meaning to the phrase “catching rays.” They also burst onto the scene of renewable energy with tremendous promise for a greener more sustainable world. In this three part series, we will be shining a spotlight on the solar panel, a technology created to capture energy from the sun. In the second part of this series, we will be delving into the history of the solar panel to understand its evolution as an energy creation technology.
The sun is the ultimate power hold of the Earth, providing light, heat, and nutrients for the agriculture we rely on and the settings we dwell in. By harnessing the sun’s energy, human beings have a free, clean, and infinite energy source in their hands, allowing us to produce and continue developing as a species without worrying about clogging up skies or our waters. When we think about solar energy like this, limitless and powerful, it can be difficult to grasp why it took so long to create and adopt solar energy technologies, like the photovoltaic solar panel.
In 1883, the American inventor Charles Fritts designed and created the first solar cell, using selenium as a semiconductor. Why did this new technology not instantly take off? Because the electrical efficiency of the cell was less than 1%, and though this first solar panel did successfully convert sunlight into electricity, the use of selenium made the solar panel very expensive.
For decades, the primary reasons for the lag in the adoption of solar energy technology have been its inefficiency and high price. At the time of Fritts’ debut product, the Industrial Revolution was at its height, running on the most popular invention of time: the modern steam turbine. This was a fossil fuel-burning invention that caused the development of solar technology to be pushed to the back burner as businesses preferred to take the fastest way to profitability, even if that meant leaving years of environmental damage in their wake. Fossil fuel-burning technologies were cost-efficient and easy to power, so they went on to become the primary energy technology that powered the 20th century.
In 1883, the S-curve of innovation for PV solar cells was only just being drawn. The first sketch from the x-axis was glimpsed, however, the acquisition of expensive materials and the majority of firms’ reluctance to invest in such an inefficient form of technology caused the adoption of PV panel technological progress to stop mid-curve. The uncertainty of solar panel technology was not a risk industries were interested in making, and with the adoption of fossil fuels, the growth trajectory of solar panels appeared stationary until the 1950s.
With the Space Race, solar technology was unveiled as the reliable energy generation technology that could survive the harsh vacuum of space that Americans in the 1950s were so eager to reach. Tasked by NASA, researchers at Bell Laboratories sought to increase the efficiency of Fritts’ solar panel and found that by using silicon instead of selenium, the efficiency of solar cells could increase from 1% to 6%.
By 1972, nearly every U.S. satellite was running on solar power, an application of the technology that motivated scientists and researchers to invest in silicon-based solar cell production which effectively reduced the cost of the solar panels. With the oil shocks of 1973 and 1979, when the price of oil skyrocketed from $3 a barrel to $40 a barrel, the overall development of renewable energy alternatives in addition to solar energy became a priority across the U.S. The social and economic reasoning behind this was to reduce the rising economic and social impacts of using foreign oil.
In the 1950s, the S-curve of solar panel development began to be drawn with renewed vigor. With the space industry affirming the capabilities of the technology, more and more industries that had been waiting for further developments in solar panels began investing in the technology. Firms were taking the time and the effort to understand and evaluate solar panels, finding that the increased efficiency and low cost of this renewable, clean energy source were worth their efforts.
Eventually, the urgency of the drive to create a renewable nation lessened in the 1980s and 1990s, but solar technology continued to improve, not out of interest but out of need. In 1997, an agreement called the Kyoto Protocol was signed by committed industrialized and developing countries in an effort for these nations to limit and reduce greenhouse gases emissions in accordance with those nations’ agreed individual targets. Humanity’s excessive and thoughtless usage of fossil fuel driven technologies was catching up, leaving the generations of the 21st century to deal with the filthy mess their ancestors had left behind in a cloud of carbon dioxide.
Thus, the increase in solar power is closely connected to the increasing awareness of the dangers of climate change and the world’s long lost, and now found, need for low-cost, zero carbon sources of electricity. With this demand for more solar cells accelerating around the world, more large production facilities were being built, causing the price of solar panels to fall in response.
Stay tuned for part three to learn more about the implementation of solar panels into our everyday lives.
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